Adventurepan, i,e. Adventures from someone living in Japan, who used to write a blog called Adventurestan, which was by someone living in Afghanistan.
Do you enjoy profanity, rants that are mildly informed at best, and a Heinleinian outlook on how society ought to be? Look no further.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Redneck Gays

I know I don't post a lot these days.. This academic program I'm in offers me enough of a writing outlet I guess, and by the time I'm done reading and writing I don't really feel like writing anything more. Nammean?

That doesn't mean I don't have the same amount (or lack thereof) of shit floating around in my head as, say, youm (yes youm), but sometimes when I sit down and scratch out an idea, it's disjointed and unorganized. I'll figure it out sometime. A biproduct of being forced to write/critique organization for class and for my job makes me scoff at shit that is too here and there.

That won't stop me from posting the following drivel though.. Assuming my 3 readers even pop by anymore...

So I spent the new years at the inlaws' house. New years in Japanistan is kinda like Xmas in the US of A in that it's a time when you get together with the fam. Imagine my chagrin when I realized what the alternative to drinking all night and kissing strangers would be. Sacrifices, folks.

Anyway, on the way back I was getting a little drowsy and the missez was sleeping, so I drank a redbull and busted out the ole' CD case. I have a jukebox in my car that automatically dumps CDs onto a harddrive, so I don't usually look at the CDs, but I had a good idea for keeping myself awake.

Back when it was cool and not risky at all to download the piss out of copyrighted music, I, like any innerwebs user, did so. My friends did too. We would also make CDs and dump all our music collection on eachothers' HDs as well. So I have 6 "backup" CDs with about 200 mp3s on them a piece. My car can play mp3s off of CDs, so I started throwing the backup CDs in and cruising down memory lane.

I don't have an iPod and refuse to buy one. I have a little mp3 player that I listen to when I'm doing boring cardio, but to be honest I haven't updated the play list in about 3 years. I love me some music but I'm not the "gotta have 10,000 songs with me at all times or I'll just DIE" type person. Six CDs with 200 songs on it a piece though, that's nothing to sneeze at. so I made my way through the CDs from the back, starting at #6, which is where I get to anticlimactic point of all this buildup, namely a song by Rage Against the Machine.

I'm not really a fan of RATM -- their stupid lyrics are a little hard to handle. Some of their stuff is cool though, and I always liked "Renegades of Funk". Give it a listen if you haven't before, or you'd like to be reminded of it.

Anyway, I was listening to it and I remembered what a regionally famous friend of mine (Eddie) once said, probably about 10 years ago. "You know," he said, "the first time I heard this song I thought they were saying 'We're the Redneck Gays who Fuck.'" So the song comes on about 4 hours into my drive home, giving me a serious case of the giggles thinking about it. Here are some token lyrics:

Since the Prehistoric ages and the days of ancient GreeceRight down through the Middle AgesPlanet earth kept going through changesAnd then the renaissance came, the times continued to changeNothing stayed the same, but there were always redneck gaysLike Chief Sitting Bull, Tom PaineDr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm XThey were redneck gays of their time and ageThe mighty Redneck gays

We're the redneck gays who fuck(fuck!)We're the redneck gays who fuck(fuck!)

Or...

There was a time when our musicWas something called a Big Street beatPeople would gather from all aroundTo get down to the big soundYou had to be a redneck gay in those daysTo take a man to the dance floor

I dunno. I guess it seemed a lot funnier then. As I write it down, like my other stuff, it's really not that funny. You know, singing a tribute redneck gays (who fuck) having a huge impact on history with such earnestness. Or calling MLK, Malcolm X, and Sittingbull "Redneck gays". That's funny to me.

Anywho, I was surprised at how listening to songs I hadn't heard in so long re-energized me. The drive went by really quickly, as I listened to songs I hadn't heard in forever and reminisced about where I was/what I was doing when I was "into it". Anyway, I thought I'd share a few of the other songs with you that I heard during my walk down auralmemory lane. You can tell I was on CDs 5 and 6 'cuz the names of the groups are all at the end of the alphabet. Enjoy.

Some Ween:

A little stinkfist ala Tool:

Used to watch this on that show 120 Minutes on MTV as a college freshman. I kinda liked it:

7 Comments:

Many moons ago, I saw Ween play a small half-empty club. Prior to that time, I'd seen a shitload of live music, and since that time I've seen 3.5 shitloads of live music. And yet...

I can honestly say that of all the bands I've seen give a drunken live performance, no band was ever half as drunk as Ween was that night. Any other band and we probably would have been pissed off, but since it was Ween, it kind of enhanced the overall experience despite the fact that they sounded like complete and utter crap. The highlight may have been when the singer forgot the words to "Reggare Juinke Jew" and tripped over his own amp.

1) Watching "Hot Dog" (the movie)and fixing my eyes on the twin assets of Shannon Tweed. I ran straight to the bathroom for a good ol' tubesteak massage session. Mind ye, its the first time I saw one of the best things of the female anatomy.

no, but i vacuumed our whole place before we left. funny u ask tho, cuz my wife sometimes heads back home early (advance party) and spends 2 entire days cleaning her mom's place before the holiday and before i show up.

that reminds me of when i was in college and staying at a host family's house in nagoya. every morning at 8am my host dad would vacuum the entire house. mind you, this is a house that had never had anyone with shoes on in it in its entire history (pre-wwii house). yet hed vacuum every morning. i had a 3 tatami room (maybe 6ft by 9ft) with a sliding door with those paper walls. id sleep with my head pointing towards to sliding door, and he would slam the vacuum against the door jamb over and over while vacuuming. every morning. at 8am. i wanted to kick his ass.